Harvest II

Lord, as we celebrate harvest – we pray for a world in which the fruits of the earth are shared fairly amongst the people of the earth.

Knowing the unfairness of our global economy, we think especially of the West Africans who have lost their fishing rights, the Madagascans who have lost their Mosquito Eradication Programme, the Kenyan women who have lost their access to AIDS treatment. Knowing that the deaths these have caused, are the result of an economy that benefits us – we long for justice, and to become a people of justice.

Teach us again the great Christian virtues of faith, hope and love, that see justice flow like rivers and righteousness like a never failing stream.

Teach us faith, a willingness to live with inconvenience, discomfort or even pain, because we believe your promise of justice. Make us ready to live by faith, to be a people who are the means by which you create a better world. To seek and support Fair Trade, to challenge injustice and to embody a way of life that values each and every human life.

Teach us hope, that our longing for a better world is not a religious fantasy, a psychological crutch, or a biblical fairy tale. Help us to live on the strength of hope, to be a people who show here and now that heaven is breaking into earth.

Teach us love, a readiness to see ourselves in terms of others. To see who we are when viewed through the eyes of those, living outside our wealthy world, whose suffering we have tolerated for too long. Help us then to act upon love, to seek peace and pursue it.

May the body of Christ so live in the world, that faith, hope and love become real in daily life: politically subversive, socially challenging, and radically active. Move in our midst, renew our life with you, that your people may truly be your people, who seek your will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven.